Cathy and I pray you have a meaningful and blessed Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday!
For this Good Friday 2024, Cathy and I would like to invite you to share the Walk to the Cross experience our church hosts. While it is best to do the Walk in person, we've made a video and a handout we hope might help you experience what Jesus did for you and all of us on Good Friday. The Walk to the Cross Experience video linked in green allows you to see and experience the stations we have at our church. The video is 7 minutes, but please pause it as you would like. We also provided a handout for people in our congregation who can't make it in person. The handout provides instructions, reflections, actions, and prayers for each of the stations. Walk to the Cross Handout 2024. Click to download.
Cathy and I pray you have a meaningful and blessed Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday!
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Cathy likes avoiding controversy when she can, but in Sunday’s message she decided to jump into a heated debate. She didn’t address politics or sex or even religion. She took on the issue of stores using self-service registers rather than cashiers. There are strong feelings on this topic! After the service people let us know their opinions! One of the women in our church mentioned her job is to help people with problems in the self-checkout lanes at her store. A variety of memes like this have popped up around the issue. Some people love self-service. Cathy is good at self-service checkout. She quickly types in produce codes, and she uses her own bags. She likes not bringing home 20 plastic bags when she buys 20 items. Self-serve is often quicker. Introverted people can get in and out without having to make small talk with anyone. Some people hate those self-service registers. It isn’t always faster to use them, and they make mistakes too. Half the time I use a self-checkout register I need to get an employee’s help anyway! Some people like the personal contact and help a cashier provides. Even though I am introverted, I have come to enjoy talking with “my” regular cashiers as I check out. When our local Aldi’s put in self-serve kiosks, I was concerned they would take jobs from some great people. Research shows that while self-service gas pumps are preferred by a great majority of people, grocery store self-service registers are not as universally appreciated. For this and other reasons, stores like Walmart are going back to having more human cashiers. Cathy raised the self-service register debate in order to bring up a broader question. Is it better to be served or to serve ourselves? Clearly Jesus taught us to serve others. On Sunday our scripture read “For even the Son of Man (that is, Jesus) did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). When we celebrate the Last Supper during Holy Week, we remember the story of Jesus washing the dirty feet of His disciples before they ate together. It was a clear example Jesus gave of the importance of serving others. But Jesus wasn’t opposed to being served. Jesus had His disciples arrange the meal they had together. After they ate Jesus asked His friends to be with Him as He prayed in the garden before He left to give His life for them and us. Is it better to take care of ourselves or want others to help us? One of my favorite memes is a response to an either/or question. It shows a little girl's answer when asked if the family should have hard or soft taco shells. Then it shows the family's response. In our family the question would be if we should have cookies or cake for dessert. My response is the same as her family's! So, should we help ourselves or should we get help from others? Why not both? I am sure you know people who depend on others to do things they could do for themselves. It’s usually not good for either side. I also know people who won’t ask for help when it would be best for them and even though others would love to serve them. If we want to know the blessing of serving other people then we have to let others have the blessing of helping us too. Jesus came to serve us, but we have to be willing to accept His help. Jesus scolded Peter for being too proud to let Jesus wash his dirty feet.
It is nice to be able to take care of ourselves. But it is even better for us to know the blessing of taking care of each other. On Sunday I asked our church what makes a piece of art valuable? I learned the 10 most expensive paintings are valued from $168 million to more than $450 million! What could make a piece of canvas and paint worth so much? One of the top 10 paintings most valuable paintings is Paul Cezanne’s masterpiece “The Card Players.” It is worth $250-300 million. On the right is Rembrandt’s “The Standard Bearer.” It was listed at $198 million. Below is another in the top 10. It is a Jackson Pollock work titled “Number 17A.” I used to have my elementary students do splatter art like this painting! Pollock’s is worth $200 million! I don’t see it, but Cathy “gets it” and sees a beautiful work of art. These very different paintings are all extremely valuable! So, what makes a work of art a masterpiece worth hundreds of millions of dollars? Here are some of the things I learned in reading about famous paintings. 1. The creator of the masterpiece makes a huge difference in what it is worth! Masterpiece creators like Cezanne, Rembrandt, and Pollack have great skill, technique, and their works have a reputation of excellence. 2. The history of the masterpiece can add to its value. Often masterpieces are discovered as hidden treasures. Many have survived wars and other disasters. What a painting has experienced in its lifetime makes for a better story and can add to its value. 3. The way the masterpiece captures and uses light. Great art is really all about the light reflecting off it. I don’t want to get too geeky in this blog, but the impact of a painting is determined by how our brains interpret the light our eyes receive from the painting. Honestly, even before I studied what makes a painting valuable, I knew the most important factor in determining whose work made the top 10 list of most valuable pieces of art. What is it? 4. The highest price someone was willing to pay for it! The price someone paid for each painting set its value on the 10 on the list. The main point from my message Sunday? You were created to be God’s masterpiece. Ephesians 2:10 I wanted everyone in our church to know they were created by God to be His masterpiece. I want you to know the same is true for you. We are more important to God than any painting on the top 10 list. Even though they are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, God cares more about you and me. Cathy and I started blogging for Lent. Why is Lent important? Why are Holy Week and Easter so important? Because it is a time to remember that God sent His Son Jesus to pay the ultimate price for you, for me, and for the whole world. If the value of something is decided by how much someone is willing to pay, God thinks you are very valuable. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 That is the good news of the gospel. But it is not the end of the gospel story. We are saved for a purpose. “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians 2:10) God created us as His handiwork to be shared with others. He created us to share His goodness and beauty with others. I asked people as they left Sunday to remember they were God’s masterpiece and to go out into the world and look and do good for Him. I also told them not to get a fat head! Paul reminds us that it is the artwork’s creator who deserves the credit, not the painting. This picture shows the most valuable painting in the world being displayed.
I found its subject fascinating, so I thought I’d share it. This Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece is titled Salvator Mundi. The subject of the most valuable piece of art in the world is Jesus, the Savior of the World. You were created by God to be a masterpiece. You are more valuable than any manmade art, even this $450,300,000 masterpiece. Lent is a great time to remember why that is true. Most mornings Cathy and I walk together in the countryside or I go on a run. The weather is not always great, but the countryside is beautiful. Here are pictures of Rose Road near our house in the last 10 days. When spring comes and the snow melts, if you start looking at the grass beside the road this is what you see. Soon after moving to our rural town of Tyner I got upset because people use the beautiful countryside as a place to toss their garbage. I wrote a blog on my gratitude for the people who help deal with other people’s “trash”, and not just the litter variety. I also recognized that in my lifetime people have had to deal with my garbage too. I’ve started my spring cleanup “trash runs” in the countryside, and it hit me how nice the scenery looks until you start seeing the trash. This made me think of the Christian practice of the Daily Examen. The Daily Examen is a popular Lenten spiritual discipline. It is usually done at night as we prayerful examine our hearts and reflect on the events of the day in order to discern God’s presence and his direction for us. Psalm 139:23-24 is often prayed. Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. In other words, as part of the Examen we ask God to help us look for any trash He might want us to clean up in our lives. We admit our hearts and thoughts aren’t as pretty as they may appear to others, and even to ourselves. We seek to clean things up before the trash starts accumulating. Eventually what is in our hearts will become visible in our attitudes, words, and actions. One of the most important steps in the Daily Examen is repenting, and with God’s help and grace, getting rid of the "trash". It is seeing any garbage in our lives for what it is and asking God to help haul it away. I’ve still got more trash to find and get rid of in my life. And there is still more to clean up on Rose Road. I’ve already taken a couple trash runs this year, and I have more planned. It always feels good to dump a load of garbage after a trash run. And cleaning up the trash makes it so much easier to look for the beauty that was always there.
Have you ever totally missed hints that were all around you? I’m not talking about a word that goes over your head or misunderstanding something. I’m talking about being oblivious to what is right there. As I was growing up, my dad joked with me more than one time, “Jeff, if it was a snake, it would have bit you.” I so easily miss seeing things that are right in front of me. Last week, Cathy thanked me for changing the battery in her electric toothbrush. Mine needed to be changed anyway, so it was an easy thing to do. As I was accepting her thanks for this little thing, I got up the courage to ask her why she hadn’t thanked me for the Valentine’s Day cards I had given her. Note the plural here: cards. We do not normally exchange Valentine’s Day cards—and especially this year with it being Ash Wednesday—Cathy justifiably assumed we weren’t doing cards. In Cathy’s defense, these were not sparkly expensive Hallmark cards. They were tiny cards I’d cut off the back of a Little Debbie’s Valentine’s snack cake box. I’m such a romantic! The cards hadn’t cost anything, so I didn’t think she would care that I broke our tradition of not buying things for each other for Valentine’s. Even though the only cost was a little time, I was a bit hurt. They weren’t Hallmark cards, but I had put at least a little thought into them. I wanted Cathy to know I still love her after all these years. I’m so glad I asked about them. The issue wasn’t that she was ungrateful. She honestly didn’t even see them! I had put them places where I thought Cathy would see them. But they were tiny, and Cathy missed them completely! She assumed they were just more little pieces of paper we tend to leave around all over the house (receipts, sticky notes, library due dates). Once I told her, she looked over at her nightstand and sure enough, there was one! (This also gives you an idea of their impressive size.) She had even picked one up and used it as a bookmark in her Bible and hadn’t even paid attention to what it was! (I'm not even sure where the bigger one on the left came from!) Cathy felt terrible knowing I thought she’d ignored the ways I tried to tell her I loved her. She hadn’t ignored these hints that I loved her. She’d missed them entirely! But once she knew to look, she found them and appreciated them.
This Lent we encourage you to keep your eyes open to all the ways God loves you. Sometimes the hints are easy to miss. Love is not all Hallmark cards, flowers, and candy. Love can be found in a kind word, a caring touch, or even a tiny Little Debbie’s Valentine card. God’s love can be seen in a beautiful sky or heard in a song that touches our heart. He leaves hints everywhere if we just have eyes to see, ears to hear, and souls open to being touched by His love. The following is a meditiation given on February 14, 2024 at the Ash Wednesday combined service for Plymouth Trinity, Plymouth First, and Tyner UMC churches. I’ve had two big items on my calendar the last few weeks for today. Two things I didn’t want to forget! The first is Valentine’s Day. I didn’t want to forget it because Pastor Cathy is my wife, and I would feel horrible if I forgot to wish her a Happy Valentine’s! It might not have been as nice driving over or home if I had forgotten. The second item on my calendar the last several weeks has been Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. For the first time in 73 years, Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday fall on the same day on the calendar. Valentine’s Day is always February 14; this year, for the first time in my life Ash Wednesday is too. Falling on the same day brings up some interesting contrasts. I asked the following questions when our church visited the residents of Miller’s Merry Manor assisted living center, and they nailed them! I asked them when they thought of Valentine’s Day, what came to mind? They shouted out, “Candy, roses, flowers, hearts. I asked the residents, “What is the color of Valentine’s?” “Red, bright red!” I asked, “What do we think of on Ash Wednesday?” “Ashes, of course!” “A cross made from ashes.” Maybe fasting too, but since we were sharing Little Debbie’s Valentine’s Hearts with them the residents, I didn’t highlight fasting. “What would Ash Wednesday’s color be?” Harder to answer, but they said “gray.” Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. Candy and roses, ashes and a cross.
Very different holidays. The interesting thing is they are both about love. If you have someone you love, you still have a few hours left to wish them a Happy Valentine’s Day! If you have someone special you love, be sure to show them you love them in whatever way is best. It might be roses or candy. It might be a hug. Cards, phone calls, or texts might be good too. But Ash Wednesday is all about our hearts too. As Jesus said and Pastor Lauren read, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” We should treasure the people in our life, and not just on Valentine’s Day. But Jesus is encouraging us and challenging us to see where God’s place is in our heart. Are there any ways He is not occupying His rightful place in our hearts? Pastor Cathy read Joel 2:12-13, a traditional scripture chosen on Ash Wednesdays. It very much focuses on getting our hearts right. “Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Stores and restaurants have been advertising Valentine’s Day specials because they had material treasures for our loved ones. The candy is soon eaten, the roses fade, and the cards are put away or recycled and even likely forgotten before long. Nice treasures, for sure, but also ultimately fleeting. Ash Wednesday may feel somber, darker than Valentine’s Day. But the ashes and crosses of Ash Wednesday remind us of a lasting and even deeper love than Valentine’s Day. They remind us of a sacrificial love that is ours for eternity. While Valentine’s Day reminds us of the importance and joy of romance and the love of family and friends. Ash Wednesday reminds us of how much we are loved by God who gave us the gift of His Son, Jesus. Ash Wednesday’s symbol is not roses or candy, it is a cross made out of ashes. Ash Wednesday reminds us our lives are fleeting, but the depth of the God’s love and forgiveness found in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is eternal. On Ash Wednesday we are reminded to turn our hearts to a God who is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. You still have time to share your love with someone this Valentine’s Day! It is always a good time to share your love with someone. But I encourage you, even more, to find time, not just on this Ash Wednesday, but every day this Lent, to spend time with God and meditate on how much He loves you. Cathy and I have chosen “bridge” as our word of the year for 2023. I have taken another step on the bridge! I am “officially” semi-retired from full-time employment. I now have more time to think about things other than work. I also have more time to play disc golf! Cathy joined me Wednesday for a fun round at Wilson Park. It is a beautiful course with woods, hills, and long “bomber” shots. Sorry, the picture is a bit blurry. It was even more picturesque than this. I’ve spent some of my extra time looking back over the many different jobs I’ve had in the last 45+ years. Mostly it has been good looking back, even a joy. I have been blessed with amazing life experiences and people in my life because of the work I’ve been able to do. Some of you reading this are included in these memories! But looking back can also be painful. I’ve been going through some of my old journals and saw my goals from 10 years ago. I fell short on several. Way short on a couple. Some of the dreams I had will never be realized. When it comes to physical or financial goals, my best years are very likely behind me.
But for all the ups and downs the “bridge” year 2023 has brought, it has clarified my main goal. I want things to be well with my soul as I head into this next stage of life. The soul is a hard thing to define, but I see it as the core of who we are. The Bible often calls it our “heart,” the center of our will and being. I believe there is something in each of us that goes beyond our physical being. Financial health and physical health are important, but not as important as our soul’s health. Our physical bodies and the world we live in impact our souls, but they don’t control them. Who we are at our core is much more important than our physical bodies or our financial well-being. I am fortunate to have Cathy and a spiritual director regularly check in on my soul’s health. How about you? How is it with your soul? If I can ever pray for you, or if you ever want to email and check in with me about how it is with your soul, feel free. While I may not have the financial and physical strength I dreamed of having 10 years ago, I have more free time now than I did then! All the great memories of the first house Cathy and I owned are because we took another look. We ended up having the house for over 8 years, the second longest period we’ve ever lived anywhere. We brought TJ and Will home from the hospital to this house after they were born. We celebrated Easters, Christmases, birthdays, and gatherings with family, friends, and students in this house. But we only lived there because we took another look. After returning from overseas, Cathy and I had started thinking of buying a house. One weekend my parents were visiting. We decided to take them with us on a walk and stop by a couple of open houses. They knew a lot more about owning a home than we did. This was one of the houses we went by. I’m not the only one who started singing “Little Pink Houses” by John Cougar (Mellencamp), am I? When we walked up to the house, my mom asked what we thought of it. I didn’t have a strong positive feeling about the house, but Cathy said she wouldn’t want to have a pink house. And it did look small. She wasn’t sure it was worth going in. My mom said it could be whatever color we wanted if it was ours. Why not see the inside before ruling it out? She thought it had potential. When we went inside, we saw dated carpet, more pink, no door on the bathroom, and a list of other minor issues. It also had lots of sunlight, a sunporch, and a back deck. The basement was unfinished but the size of the full house. My dad found a place to pull back a bit of carpet and discovered beautiful hardwood flooring. My mom and dad were great at fixing up houses and they kept telling us things we could do with this little pink house. Before long, Cathy and I were both excited about the possibilities. We ended up putting an offer on the house. I still can’t believe we got the home we lived in and loved for 8 years for the price we did. It wasn't gray for long! We put a bit work into that house. Our parents helped us with that too. We will never regret having and working on the little pink house.
Cathy and I like this story because it reminds us that it can be worth it to take another look. And it is helpful considering things through the eyes of those wiser than us. It is so easy to make quick decisions based on our emotions. It is easier to hear voices that are loud, not necessarily wise. Surface beauty is easier to see than looking for the potential in people and situations that might take a bit of effort to find and develop. For Christians, the eyes we want to see with and the voice we want to listen to belong to Jesus. Jesus won’t yell at us or force us to do anything. But He may encourage us to take another look at the people, relationships, and circumstances in our life. And He may help us see the good in them we don’t see. I had one great weekend. When you get to do things you love with people you love, it is easy to be happy! I played 72 holes of disc golf with my brother, Joe, on a beautiful course. The weather was perfect, and we played with some fun teams. Joe killed it on this hole! It's steeper than it looks. I watched an old movie I love, Galaxy Quest, with Joe and my wife, Cathy. I ate frozen pizza. Gino’s East frozen pizza. It was so good, I wish I didn’t learn they made frozen pizza! It was so easy being happy! Cathy gave me the week off from preaching, and she shared a sermon titled “Fullness of Joy.” The message came at a perfect time. A cold front blew through during the service and brought our week of perfect weather to an end. A sunny, warm morning turned into a cold, gray, windy wet day. My disc golfing partner headed back to “real” life and work in Indianapolis. No more Gino’s East pizza for awhile either. It even started snowing on our cold, windy walk this morning. There is no doubt it is easier to be happy when we are getting what we want, but for some of us happiness comes easier than for others. Social science tells us some people are born with a predisposition for having a positive attitude; some of us are born with a predisposition toward depression. While I believe in the gift of freewill, it is obvious some people have more access to things that bring earthly happiness. Joy is more a condition of the heart that points to an eternal gift of contentment and peace we will find in heaven. Even when life is not going our way, there are things we can do to increase our joy. Cathy shared the following with us. 1. Focus on the blessings rather than the trials We got a bigger tax bill than we expected this year. But we had the money to be able to pay it. We are healthy enough to work. We were able to pay it because people are good enough to employ us. 2. Focus on the One who is bigger than the trials As a former colleague used to tease me when I seemed anxious, “Why pray when you can worry?” Am I really sharing my trials with God and giving them to Him in prayer? 3. Find scripture, music, activities, people that focus on joy I got to play frisbee with my brother and Evan, a boy who goes to our church after the service, even though it was getting windy and colder. Most people I know say they don’t want to live past 100. Matt said after the service he’s going to live to 122 You have to have some joy in your life to want to be around until your 122! Cathy shared that some of the music she listened to made her happy, but it is better for her when she listens to music that focuses on joy. Here is one of our favorites for bringing us some joy. Zach Williams- Old Church Choir 4. Focus on deepening your relationship with God Scripture tells us that the fruit the Holy Spirit gives is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law that can take these gifts away from us (Galatians 5:22-23). Christians believe that the fullness of joy is found in the fullness of the hope we have in God, not in the temporary things of this world that make us happy. Whatever your beliefs, I hope and pray you find some joy this week! My Dad just gave me a book titled the Wisdom of Fulton Sheen. It is made entirely of quotes taken from a lifetime of service to God and others. This quote grabbed my attention: The rapidity of communication, the hourly news broadcasts, tomorrow’s news the night before—all these make people live on the surface of their souls. The result is that very few live inside themselves. They have their moods determined by the world. While the date wasn’t given, this was likely from the 1960’s. It refers to newspapers, the nightly TV news, and radio news reports on the hour. Now we have news available 24/7. With the advent of the internet and smart phones, current mass communication is even more rapid and widely available. It is more targeted and effective at controlling our moods. While I have gone to church for decades and read the Bible several times, I have never studied theology formally until now. Theology is simply the study of the nature of God and religious belief. As a pastor, the theology class I’m taking is coming from a Christian perspective. Whether a person believes in God or not, this class has convinced me that what we believe matters. Not what we say we believe or even think we should believe, but what we truly believe is the most important thing about us. Holy Week is upon us. For Christians particularly, and I hope for everyone, it is a time to slow down and think and live below the surface of our souls. It is a time to examine what we truly believe, especially about Jesus. Christian churches will be celebrating Palm Sunday this weekend and Easter next Sunday. Many churches will have Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services during Holy Week. Cathy and I encourage you to attend these if possible. At Tyner UMC we would like to invite anyone in the area to come to our “Walk to the Cross” experience on Good Friday. It is set up for people to reflect on and experience what Jesus did for us—a time to slow down and go deeper into our soul; A time to listen to what Jesus might have to say to us more than what the world does. While it is good to celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter, Cathy and I would like to offer anyone interested a chance to walk with Jesus during the days leading up to Good Friday and Easter.
Below is a link to an online YouVersion devotional we are doing next Monday through Friday. If you have the YouVersion app it should be easy to accept. If you don’t, it may or may not take you there. You may need to download the free app. Cathy and I love YouVersion, but as always, no pressure!! There is an option to comment on each day's devotional, but it is not necessary or expected. |
Jeff StueveJeff likes to connect ideas from scripture, education, sociology, and church to life--and BoLD living. Categories |